The steel ribs arching over New York City’s newest transit station have already become a familiar sight for the city’s residents and tourists. Now, after seven years of delays, the striking new World Trade Center Transportation Hub will finally open this month in Lower Manhattan.

Perhaps the most ambitious (certainly the largest) closed ecosystem humans have ever conceived is Biosphere 2, a 3.14-acre Earth system research complex located in the desert outside of Tuscon, Arizona.